A Better Beret

So, here's the improved beret, beautifully modelled by my lovely daughter.  I'm not so enamoured of all the pink appearing at the centre where the bobble is as it makes it a bit nippley.  It has led me to save it in my Ravelry projects as the Tit-fer Hat though!

Spinning my winning

At the pre Christmas meeting of the Guild of Long Draw Spinners, we had a free raffle where I was the lucky winner of a shoe box full of gorgeous poonags. They were soft, wormy and not my usual colours, but oh so beautiful. I had no time to spin them before Christmas, then a shoulder injury took care of the first 6 weeks of 2015.  It was frustrating to say the least.

Finally I was healed enough to open the box and spin!  I had a jumbo flyer and maiden for my Sonata for Christmas, so I decided that I'd try it out and attempt to wean myself away from the fine spinning that is my default.  (I attribute this to parsimony - so many more hours of pleasure from fluff if you spin it small!).  I realised half way through that I hadn't taken pictures of the poonags in their glory, so here you can see a few with the singles that flowed from them/

Here's the singles caked up - still not particularly chunky, but going in the right direction

I didn't know what to ply it with at first.  Then I remembered that years ago I was gifted a wrap with permission to unravel it.  This proved to be a game in itself until I realised the cunning way in which the wrap had been put together.  As the unravelling breakthrough happened so late at night, there were no pictures and I would feel mean about revealing too much about the wrap - both who it came from and what pattern it was.  Suffice to say, the two ends of colourmart silk matched beautifully with my singles

I decided to play on the differing fibre contents and experiment with a spiral ply.  I found it a bit hard to start with, but eventually cottoned on to what I needed to do. Initially I thought I would ply the silk around the singles, but it looked a lot better the other way round as it allowed the handspun to poof at will.

You can see the fun I had with spiral plying!  (Sorry for the off colour - definitely not so orangey in real life!)

It's not very even throughout the skein - you can definitely see my progress as I learnt what I needed to do.  This is before finishing.

My daughter had a doll with hair like this

Are these glasses ageing?

All washed, relaxed, skeined and twisted into skwooshy beauty.  Look at those shots of orange, the lemon and the mushroom gill shades

Caked into 146 grammes, 322 yards of DK squish!

I could pretend that the start of the cake is flat to aid cast on, but it's where I was getting to grips with the technique

I've yet to decide what to knit with it.  Plus, as these are so not the colours that suit me, I am toying with the idea of over dyeing the whole thing.  Would it be rude to do so?

Dyeing to have fun

I spent a very happy Sunday afternoon last month with my friend, the inimitable Knitting Mongoose where she taught me a bit about dyeing.  I don't know what came over me as I'm not usually a brights person, but obviously my subconscious desperately needed two rainbows

Dried and wound, the cakes of yarn look very different and I thought I would knit them up into a pair of socks

However, I decided that I really needed a big, multicoloured beret so off I went, following the instructions in the Knitter's Handy book of Patterns.  It's currently at the finished, bathed and drying stage, so you will have to wait for the finished result and my commentary.  I will say no more at this point!

Fibre adventure

Lovely Fiona gave me my first lesson in spinning at knit night last week.  It's a lot harder than it looks!  I was instructed to soak the results in hot water to set the twist, so I went the whole hog and had a go at dyeing too, using a pack of Koolaid.  I've a small stash of packets that Lori sent me all the way from S Carolina - many years ago we were all ATC and altered art freaks together - just occasionally there's a benefit to being reluctant to throw things out!   

So, here's my photo story of not quite fluff to finished article, but all the steps in between.  And yes, that is one of Alice Starmore's books - a bit tattered but a bargain from a charity shop.  TBH I don't really get why so many rave about her - can anyone enlighten me?

Oh, can anyone suggest what I can make with about 16 yards of bumpy orange oddness?